“The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.”

“A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.”

“The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, ‘bread-bread-fame’ or ‘fame-fame-bread.'”

“We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.”

“Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was — nobody any longer wanted to be that.”

“With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.”

“We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.”

“There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.”

“With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.”

“Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.”

“There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.”

“There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.”

“What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don’t deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don’t we just as often draw the wrong ones?”

“When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?”

Colombia is the only South American country that borders both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

GRAVITATIONAL LENS = STELLAR NAVIGATION

28671 = (2 / 8)-6 × 7 – 1

Can a man released from prison be called a freeee?

“Nature uses as little as possible of anything.” — Johannes Kepler

Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day that Joseph Stalin’s death was announced. Moscow was so thronged with mourners that three days passed before the composer’s body could be removed for a funeral service.

“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, ‘Is there a meaning to music?’ My answer would be, ‘Yes.’ And ‘Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?’ My answer to that would be, ‘No.'” — Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music, 1939

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Futility Closet is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible.

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